Leading up to the Persian Gulf Steamroller, the Air Force wanted to nix the A-10 - it wasn't sexy enough, and actually got too close to the idea of actually *GASP* supporting the Army, as opposed to just making sure that enemy planes couldn't do anything to them.

Oh, it was the Army trying to kill it too.

How *dare* the air force kill tanks. THAT"S THEIR JOB.

They didn't like having to "call for support" (this does make some sense, from a standpoint of differing goals). The Air Force didn't want to be in the close Air Support role, they wanted the expensive, fancy stuff.

The Army didn't want them in the close Air Support Role, and they wanted the expensive, fancy helicopters.

Whole deal smelled incredibly like the German 88 of WWII....

I honestly don't know about the AC-130 replacing the Warthog - but if it does, I'll be sad. The Warthog just sounds like a great all-around plane...

First, its not a great "all-around" airplane. :) Technically speaking. Its really built for daylight operations. It suffers incredibly in bad weather - which is one of the Army's gripes. They were considering making new ones, a few years back, wth 2 people, and that would allow "all weather" operations, but see the above battle.. and nevermind. So they've stop-gapped some, giving the pilots night-vision goggles, etc. etc...

But the AC-130 won't replace the A-10, they've got horribly different missions. The AC-130 can only be used where Air Superiority has been established (it would be easy meat for a fighter), and not hard to kill with SAM or AA fire. the A-10 comes in barely over the trees, can dodge, and even fight back, to some extent .

Having said that, this is the same DoD that introduced the 5.56mm S109....................................................

Addison